


Gauze: For the Bleeding

by Zealkin



Series: Sidereus [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Black Character(s), Character Study, F/F, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 13:37:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7642729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zealkin/pseuds/Zealkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You sit down at your desk and shake the dust from letters that aren't ancient, but may have been kept in your attic for too long. The edges of the paper curl and you wonder why no one bothered to send anything digital. Letters are considered more sentimental, but the recipient is also expected to respond with one. There are only four that require your attention, but still, the idea tires you. Dredging up faces and memories from half a decade ago makes something in you ache.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gauze: For the Bleeding

**Author's Note:**

> Rose tries to tie up loose ends.

You sit down at your desk and shake the dust from letters that aren't ancient, but may have been kept in your attic for too long. The edges of the paper curl and you wonder why no one bothered to send anything digital. Letters are considered more sentimental, but the recipient is also expected to respond with one. There are only four that require your attention, but still, the idea tires you. Dredging up faces and memories from half a decade ago makes something in you ache.  
  
You push down the feeling and set aside several sheets of paper, but can't muster up the strength to pick up your pen.  
  
You don’t start with the most difficult because you know if you do you won’t be able to finish and will leave the papers to rot on your desk for another year or two.  
  
Coming to terms with this makes it easier to push away your diffidence and begin.  
  
You start with the Bio-Tech’s head medical officer instead. Her name is Reba. You have been in contact with her before to get details on prosthetics on the market for civilians, but you haven’t responded to the letter that she sent you after you were discharged.  
  
It should be the simplest and the most perfunctory to write, and yet you do not know where to begin. Perhaps you should start with an apology for the length of time you spent without answering, but you think maybe that kind of apology would be a year too late— five years too late actually.  
  
This makes you think that maybe you should forgo a response entirely and you’re back at square one, thumbing at the dusty box you left the letters in. You are about to put the fourth sheet of paper away when you remember her words. “ _If you need maintenance you know who to call._ ”  
  
You reconsider.  
  
You write about the oddities of your mechanical prosthetic and how you are adapting to it. You use strictly medical and academic terms, as it would seem too personal to tell her everything. How it made you an outcast, how you still don’t quite trust your magic just yet, how you wake up breathing heavily and try to claw it off your right side are all extraneous and needn’t be mentioned.  
  
You finish the letter by inquiring after her family and set it aside to start the next.  
  
You have a good momentum going and finish the letter to McCree fairly quickly. Within his own he jokes about his prosthetic, one up to his elbow, and you joke about his age and tell him not to eat so much prefabricated sugar. He won’t take your advice, but that is the type of rapport you had around each other. You quickly set it aside before you begin to reminisce too much.  
  
The third is to Mercy, you wonder if she penned a letter to everyone who had ever been hurt in the organization. You think on how endlessly busy she was when you met and believe that she may have done just that. You write that you are doing better than expected so she won’t worry. She has already so much to worry about and guilt wells up inside of you for having forgone a response for so long. You hope you’re not the cause of another gray hair or two, she already has one too many. You finish the letter with “ _Sincerely_ ”, because “ _Yours_ ” sounds too personal and Mercy has always appreciated a warm professionalism.  
  
You consider getting more sweet tea, opening the window and looking outside. You consider doing anything but finishing the last of the four.  
  
Ava sent a letter to you, it was the very first one you received. You think maybe she was the one who started the dated trend amongst your shared friends. You’re not sure if this realization ameliorates your mood.  
  
You can still feel her through the lengthy four pages that she wrote, can see her flaxen hair in the curling edges of her old letter, can feel her smile in every dotted “I” and period, and, because she is so close you want to push away again. There is a bitterness underlying the candy-floss memories, and that bitterness is inquisitive.  
  
She knows where you live, why didn’t she stop by? Why didn’t she see you off? Why couldn’t she look you in the eye and tell you it would be okay?  
  
You take three deep, steadying breaths and read over her letter again. Within, she says that she was being sent to a base in Greenland and had confused the country with its warmer counterpart. She talks of the long process of cleaning up after the fighting down south and you know she does this because she’s trying not to talk about what happened between the two of you.  
  
Maybe it’s unfair of you, she never asked you to save her life, and you hadn’t exactly asked permission. But, you hadn’t asked for a false arm either and here you both were missing various parts of the other and unable to make up for it.  
  
She finishes the letter by saying that she’s sorry, “for everything”, a statement so jejune and encompassing that it ends up meaning nothing.  
  
Maybe it’s her way of saying that the two of you should move on, “everything” might mean your relationship, and maybe she was sorry for that too. You’re not sure, and you desperately want to just step away from it all, to burn all of the fragile, fleeting sheets and say you never got them. But you’ve never been much of a liar, so you continue to sit at your desk and stare at the still blank sheet of paper.  
  
You decide to keep it short, there’s no point in responding to the filler that is now laughably out of date.  
  
You begin to start with something light, but it seems disingenuous so you do not write it down. Something more sobering then, sympathy for the end of her career after Overwatch’s disbandment. No, it might be a cause of distress for her, what if she no longer has a job because of it? But then again, maybe you want to know what she’s doing and where she is if she responds.  
  
You sigh, and place the pen down. Everything you think of edges around the question you both had desperately wanted to ask but hadn’t.  
  
You think of your recent successes, your rise to fame, and a fortune that you get rid of on a weekly basis to those who need it most. You wonder if she knows of what you are now and loathes you for it.  
  
You need to know, you need to put it to rest.  
  
_Do you forgive me_? You write instead.  
  
It’s all you can manage to write. You send the letters out the next morning.  
  
  
The fog is deep and damp around you as you sit on your porch and wait, you watch the mail carrier speed off into the sky. You tap your fingers against the white banister, listening to nothing.

You get three responses.


End file.
